Where There Are Scars…There is Healing

[Today’s guest post is from my beautiful friend/SCAR sister Jocelyn. I met Jocelyn while producing and promoting The SCAR Project Cincinnati Exhibition. Jocelyn’s stunningly beautiful SCAR portrait, taken with her stunningly beautiful daughter, Nayilah. The cool thing about this portrait, is that it was actually taken during the Cincinnati exhibition, in one of the gallery, which we walled off and turned into a photo shoot area.]

Guest Post by Jocelyn Whitfield Banks

This blog is in tribute to The Scar Project and to that frightening, but awe-inspiring moment when I took off my clothes for fashion photographer David Jay, allowing him to photograph my scars from mulitple battles with breast cancer. In 2002 a diagnosis of an aggressive breast cancer prompted the decision for a bilateral mastectomy just 30 days after my 25th birthday had come and gone.

After a second diagnosis, seven reconstruction surgeries later, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in hospital stays I am in awe of the nearly 70 inches of scars running across my trunk, my abdomen, my hips, and my new breasts. The process at times has been exhausting, overwhelming and just plain tough. At other times it has been exhilarating, and encouraging to see the inner-strength that I have as I “dig deep” for the determination to beat cancer and not let it beat me.

Some would believe that all of those post-mastectomy scars might make me “damaged goods” but I’m a firm believer that those scars are an outward and physical sign from my body that says “I may be injured, but look at me. I am healing”… Where there are scars and cuts and stitching, there is inevitably healing going on in the body. The initial trauma is over, the wounds have scabbed over, and the production of collagen to repair all of these incisions is hard at work making the parts of the body that have been cut, moved, and stitched back together heal and find their new norm in both form and function. Yes, that dark railroad of lines running across me say to me that my body is healing and we’re going to be OK…

Baring my Scars for all of the world to see was the single greatest indicator for me that I was healing on the inside too. In the pictures of all of these beautiful women, their scars show the physical trauma they each have endured, but it is The Scar Project that captures and displays to the world, the emotional trauma inflicted by breast cancer. The courage, the strength and the determination required to fight this disease are one thing, but the courage to go forth and expose both your vulnerabilities and your triumphs to complete strangers are what makes The Scar Project images so moving, so riveting, and so awe-inspiring. That moment when I proudly shared my scars to show the world that “Breast Cancer is Not a Pink Ribbon”… Well that was the moment I realized that Where There Are Scars… There is also Incredible Healing happening not only on the outside, but all over the inside too.

Our children and our loved ones need an outlet for healing too. That’s why I’m so proud to be part of a nationwide effort to support families fighting breast cancer too. Visit Mommy Has Breast Cancer for more information regarding this great 501c3 charity and for ways that you can get involved in the fight too.

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About joulesevans

Occasionally radioactive with a chance of superpowers. I use them to fight cancer. Also I write. My book Shaken Not Stirred...a Chemo Cocktail is available on Amazon and Kindle.
Currently I am working with David Jay as The SCAR Project Exhibition Consultant & Social Media Manager.